Rethinking Lifestyles

We prepare a weekly column that appears on page 7 in The Carillon and on mysteinbach.ca every week. It also appears as a blog: Rethinking Lifesyle.blogspot.com. Subscribe to it in your reader and join the discussion through the comment section. We also welcome 500 word essays from readers of the column and will publish essays germane to who we are. Send your essays to eric@southeasttransition.com.

In the waning days of the election campaign the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) gained a lot of attention. The Conservatives began trumpeting the signing of this partnership agreement as a major accomplishment, benefiting to all Canadians, the NDP made it clear that it did not support the agreement, and the Liberals came out somewhere in between. The Green Party opposed the agreement, primarily because it is not a free trade agreement, but something else.

Inevitably election time is when politicians become particularly vocal in their assertions that “we are pro-development, but they are opposed to development.” Implicit in this assertion is that what we are proposing to do, in terms of development, is good. This needs examination.

Do you actually read the mailings our incumbent MP has put in our mail boxes?
No, I thought not, you put them straight into the recycling box – waste of money and resources eh?
So where do you go to get an overview of the party policies when considering your vote for this year’s election? You go to the local grocery store, coffee shop, bar, diner, friends, family or the Carillon of course.
So what are the federal political parties promising to do to help us live in a healthy environment – here’s a few pointers for you.

Not long ago I heard of a recently retired senior saying that he was bored with his new life. His complaint was that there are only a limited number of things one can do around the house. I know many seniors who feel this way. That is why some stay in the work force as long as possible. On the other hand, some seniors stay occupied with the kind of things they did before retirement. Others pick up new challenges now that they have more time on their hands.

On Saturday, I found myself thinking about Noah. According to the Book of Genesis in the Bible, God was unhappy with humanity’s misdeeds and planned to return the Earth to its pre-Creation state by flooding it. He planned to remake it using the ark, and Noah and his family. Noah was sent forth to be fruitful, multiply, and to replenish the earth. After the flood, Noah made offerings to God and God promised to never curse the ground for man’s sake again.